Woman's Hour - Online Harms Bill, Food and Class, Talking about Climate Change

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

The government’s long delayed full response to the online harms white paper will be published today. New rules will be introduced for tech firms which allow users to post their own content. Firms who fail to protect people face fines of up to ten percent of turnover or the blocking of their sites. Popular platforms will be held responsible for tackling both legal and illegal harms and all platforms will have a duty of care to protect children using their services from being exposed to harmful content. Jane Garvey talks to the Minister in charge of steering the bill through the House of Commons Caroline Dinenage. Food historian Pen Vogler, author of Scoff, puts our eating habits under a microscope and reveals how they are loaded with centuries of class prejudice. As she says, "most Brits could read a shopping basket as though it were a character sketch: Typhoo or Earl Grey, Kingsmill or sourdough". If, she says, we spent less time scoffing at other people's eating habits and more time thinking about how everyone could have the same access to good food, then maybe Britain's reputation for bad food could be a thing of the past. The way we understand and talk about climate change has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years. To discuss why, Jane speaks to three women from this year's Power List - physicist and climate researcher Prof Joanna Haigh; one of the leads from the Climate Assembly Prof Rebecca Willis; and Guardian Environment Correspondent Fiona Harvey. Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and a warm welcome to another edition of Woman's Hour. It's Tuesday the 15th of December 2020. Welcome to the programme. You can contact us at BBC Woman's Hour on social media and also you can text the programme 84844. Text charged at your standard message rate. Do check with your network provider for the exact cost.

I'm afraid there's no way to make that announcement any more interesting than it actually is. Today, we're talking about food and class, or class. Scoff is a book called A History of Food and Class, Class in Britain. The author is Penn Vogler, and she's with us today. And we're going to cover a range of topics. We'll talk avocados, we'll talk white bread versus brown bread, do you use the expression builders tea and if you do what do you mean and all sorts of other stuff

connected to the way we eat, how we eat, even what time we eat and what we call the meals we eat. Really want to hear from you on this one, because some of us really do show our true selves, I guess, through the way we eat and how we do it. So 84844, or you can contact us on social media at BBC Woman's Hour. We'll talk as well about climate change a little bit later in the programme. And I'm asking really all of you to tell us about your Christmas plans in the light of everything that was announced yesterday and the press conference with the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. Has it made you reassess what you should be doing on the 25th of December? Let us know.

Perhaps email is better for that because it gives you a little bit more space. bbc.co.uk forward slash Woman's Hour if you'd like to email the programme on how you are thinking about or rethinking your Christmas plans this year. So to the social media companies, the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they could soon face huge fines, we're told, for breaching duty of care laws. The Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, says the government will create new laws to shut down firms that don't remove harmful content. And he also says a 13-year-old will no longer be able to access pornographic images on Twitter. We can hear now from Caroline Dynage, who's the minister in charge of getting this government bill through Parliament. Essentially, Caroline, what we're talking about here is about making digital companies accountable for their content.

That's it in a nutshell, isn't it? Yes, morning, Jane. Yes, I mean, that is it in a nutshell. Up until now, very much tech companies have been marking their own homework and that's had predictable results. They all set out terms and conditions on their websites in various, sometimes quite hard to find locations. But in far too many cases, they just aren't enforced. And we've just seen far too many tragic cases of children being groomed or abused, of young people being driven to hurt themselves because of something that they've seen online and too many people bombarded with racism and misogyny

and trolling. And this is our attempt to really try and set a global standard for safety online to tackle this. Okay, you said a global standard. I think what we have to make clear is that this is a global issue. It's a global global problem and you're dealing with this on a national level with the greatest respect in the world it's not going to work is it? Well I mean it will this I mean this is a I mean as you say it's it's a it is a global standard for safety online it is the most comprehensive approach taken to online regulation anywhere in the world so far but obviously obviously, we know quite a lot of the content that we see on our internet doesn't originate from the UK. But this legislation

covers anything that originates from anywhere in the world. So Ofcom, who will be the new regulator, will have powers to fine companies for failing in their juices of care of anything up to £18 million or 10% of their annual global turnover. But it will also have business disruption measures, including the power to block non-compliant services from being accessed in the UK. So even if something isn't generated from the UK, the regulator here in the UK can block it. Okay, we'll get into that in a second. But just back to my other point about this being a global issue. It isn't any good, the UK having what you would describe as this global gold standard, if the rest of the world doesn't apply the same standards. It's a bit of a nonsense, isn't it?

Well, I don't think it is, because I think where we lead the rest of the world will follow. I mean, already the EU are publishing their Digital Services Act, which isn't quite as comprehensive as what we're doing, but it's looking to achieve some of the similar things in Australia and Canada, all around the world. Governments are wrestling with the issue of how do we make our Internet so much safer? You know, so many people now and particularly during uh the covid period we've just seen that uh internet use has just you know spiraled for people in work and rest and play and but up until now uh there's been very little regulation of it and that's what we need to address and you know and the rest of the world is looking at how we do this. All right. Some of our listeners, perhaps many, will have heard the Today programme this morning.

They might well have heard Ian Russell, who is the father of Molly, who was just 14. She very tragically took her own life after viewing disturbing material online. And here's just a short extract of his interview on today this morning. Mr Russell here is talking about the impact of the pandemic. There's figures that show that their online moderation has dropped off massively since the pandemic because they can't get people to moderate. People looking at the content is quite harrowing and they can't do that easily from their own home when working remotely. But they have to do an awful lot more and for 15 years or so the platforms have been self-regulating and that patently hasn't worked because harmful content is all too easy to find online still.

That's Ian Russell and your heart really does go out to him. Caroline, how will what happened to his daughter be prevented from happening to anybody else as a result of what is still, we should say, a government white paper? This won't be law until 2022. So the legislation actually comes, will come forward early next year. And yeah, I mean, in Russell's story is absolutely heartbreaking. I have met with him and Molly basically accessed information online, which incited her to self-harm and that led to her taking her own life. It's just, I mean, you know, every parent's chilling nightmare, isn't it? I mean, what will this mean? Well, I mean, for children, these new laws will mean that any in-scope company must first of all take action to tackle illegal activities that threatens the safety of children. So that means anything that incites suicide that's already illegal so that the companies will have to do far

much more to root that out and take it down secondly it must prevent access to material that is inappropriate to children things like pornography but also you know things like um inciting self-harm and we've also asked the Law Commission to look separately at whether we need to actually change the law, whether we need to make a new offence of inciting, encouraging, initiating self-harm. And the third thing is that these protections will ensure there is much more restriction around content that's harmful to children,

things like bullying and grooming. Yeah, I get the intention, and it's all done with the best of intentions. How though? How will it work? Well, it will work because companies will have to set out by law, will have to set out a very firm duty of care that they have to identify what harms are on their platforms. Clearly, anything that's already illegal illegal they need to take it down but also they need to you know there's stuff that's that's legal but harmful and for children they need to make sure that they are ramping up things like age verification to make sure that children can't access

these sort of uh these sort of sites so your, you know, it's a little bit harder. But at the end of the day, it's got to be easier to report distressing content to the company, even if it's not illegal, and they must act quickly to take it down. They've got to be much more clearer about what legal content is acceptable. So they will. You're asking... When things go wrong. Ian Russell there was describing how the pandemic has had an impact on moderation.

Are you going to be asking these huge companies to take on additional staff to meet these additional responsibilities? Well, the vast majority of moderation that happens on online platforms doesn't happen from individuals sitting in an office. It happens from algorithms. They need to...

But they do need to much more tighten up. up you know at the end of the day they already say on their on their websites that you know that they don't accept abuse that they won't tolerate uh illegal content and yet we know that far too much of that goes on i mean ian russell's absolutely right to say internet use in the uk increased massively over the period of the lockdown, but also very harmful content increased. You know, in that month long period at the beginning of lockdown, the Internet Watch Foundation blocked at least 8.8 million attempts by UK internet users to access videos of children suffering sexual abuse. It's horrifying. And we really need to do something about it.

That is horrifying. And the fact that we are dealing with why, well, we're dealing with the consequences of that demand. Perhaps we should be asking more questions about why there is a demand. Are you not concerned about that? Absolutely. Yeah. Of course, we're horrified by the demand for that. And that's not covered in this bill. But what really, really troubles me, I mean, obviously, platforms should not be hosting illegal content at all. They need to be rooting it out and taking it down much more swiftly. But actually, what really disturbs me as the mum of a 13-year-old son

is that he can stumble across very upsetting images, pornographic images on things like TikTok, TikTok, you know, on things like YouTube, he can be recommended videos that promote everything from Yes, well, according to Oliver Dowden, that won't be happening when your son is 15 in a couple of years time. But how can we be sure? Well, I mean mean this is what this legislation is all about jane but actually you know the fact is that alongside this legislation we've we've also published um uh guideline codes of practice interim codes of practice so social media companies should be taking action now the legislation will start to go through next year but you know it this is this

is a grown- up conversation about protecting people from harmful content online. Well, it's a grown up conversation, some would say, is long, long overdue. There are critics of the white paper. The NSPCC is a bit disappointed. They wanted there to be a law to threaten criminal sanctions against managers at these tech companies. Why haven't you done that? No, no, that is included in the legislation, but it's a devolved bit of the, it's a deferred bit of the legislation. So we, you know, this is good for business for tech companies. You know, the legislation, it heralds this sort of new age of accountability for tech companies.

You know, something that's safer clearly will be more attractive. And, you know, they really need to think about their place in the world. Well, I mean, you could argue that they're doing very well out of the current situation. So very well indeed. And it's hard to see how frightened they'd be by the prospect of the British government fining them when at the moment many people would argue that they're not paying the right amount of tax. Well, I think that, you know that this is the right thing to do

and this isn't just going to happen here in this country. This is going to be something that happens globally. So we have got already very strong sanctions built into the legislation, so up to 18 million or 10% of their annual global turnover. But if we don't see this legislation taking the effect that we want it to, there is a devolved power a deferred power to block non-compliant services from being uh from uh from the senior management getting criminal liability this is this is not this is i mean i did this when i was the minister

of women and equalities when we had the um we had the gender pay gap legislation you know initially we wanted companies to see that this was the right thing to do. But eventually we had to trigger this second bit of the legislation. You want to think that actually social media companies will want to build trust in the modern world and see that as a way. You know, I mean, it's so difficult, though. I mean, honestly, everyone listening, I think, will have a degree of sympathy for any government. It's like trying to nail tech jelly to a global wall, isn't it? I mean, it's just about impossible.

And you're dealing with stuff like the encrypted messaging services. You've got apps which are designed to be top secret. They're being used, overused, abused, you could say, by the worst kind of individuals. How on earth can any government actually attempt to stop that occurring? So, I mean, the first thing here is that firms can actually be required to make these services safer by design. Things like limiting the ability for anonymous adults to contact children, for example, That can be part of Ofcom's remit. But actually, in this legislation, given the severity of the threat on these services, the legislation will enable Ofcom to require companies to use technology to monitor and identify and remove illegal material on encrypted or personal private communications.

But my point is the apps themselves are designed to stop even their own makers being able to access them and look at what is said there. Yes, but that does not remove their responsibility for what's held on it. And that's why this legislation will, given the severity of the threat, it will, as a last resort, Ofcom will be able to access these communications. Just a final word from a listener who has texted to say, I totally agree with holding social media companies to account. But I also think parents should take more responsibility by making sure they know what their children are looking at. Well, Sue is right, of course.

But honestly, Caroline, how many parents genuinely know what their children are looking at. Well, Sue is right, of course. But honestly, Caroline, how many parents genuinely know what their children are looking at? Well, I mean, this is the thing. I think, you know, this is a partnership really between the government and parents. Parents do have really a responsibility to try and understand what their children are doing online. You know, at the end of the day, as a parent, you wouldn't let your child play in the middle of the road without supervision. And, you know at the end of the day as a parent you wouldn't let your child play in the middle of the road without supervision and you know letting them play unfettered on the internet is can be just as dangerous so we're putting in place these measures to try and do our bit to stop children being um able to access the harmful material that could ruin that and in some cases you know potentially destroy the rest of their lives um but equally parents do have a responsibility to

make sure that they've ramped up those parental restrictions on their internet provider and that they've got an idea of what their children are doing online. Yeah, that's of course, as long as they're at home, it doesn't really apply anywhere else, I guess. Caroline, thank you very much. To put it mildly, it's a challenge. That's the Digital Minister, Caroline Dynage. Your thoughts on that are welcome at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, Penn Vogler is here, author of Scoff, a history of food and class in Britain. Penn, good morning. Welcome to the programme.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Now, we've got some great comments. I knew we'd get great comments on this one. This is all about, well, first of all, set out why you wanted to write this book. I mean, you're spot on because you're so on to something here, but on you go. So Scoff is about the way we eat now, what we eat, and about how probably the last thousand years of our history has changed it in terms of sort of social class and social pressure.

And so it's a lot about how we judge each other on what's on our tables, what's in our shopping baskets, how we've sort of tried to manipulate other people into eating what we consider is right for them. That's very much kind of part of the story. And also how we've tried to use food and dining and all the kind of paraphernalia around it, you know, the knives and the forks and the napkins, to say something about the class we feel that we should be, either we are in or that we aspire to.

And so it's about how food has kind of driven change in social, in our kind of social networks, but also how our social status has driven change in food. Here's Jo, who says, my mother called builder's tea, which I mentioned at the start of the programme, servant's tea. Let's just leave that one there.

Radio 4. Anna says, can you please clear up the thorny milk in first issue once and for all? Now, I make a cup of tea first thing i do every single morning of my life i'm afraid to say i lob in a bag a sweetener and the milk and then the hot water am i no it's that's appalling is it oh nancy mitford would just what she'd think of me yes go on so the milk in first came, it came to light, as it were, in the mid 20th century,

when people like Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Moore were defining their rather kind of, you know, kind of elite status by saying, this is how you should drink tea. I think you should, and to them, the correct way of doing it was to put the milk in last. Now, whether that makes any difference to the tea or not, I have absolutely no idea. It doesn't. Well, in actual fact, I've done this scientific experiment where I've tried it both ways. I feel that if you put cold milk into scalding tea, that actually it slightly scalds the milk and it tastes less good. But, you know, anybody is entitled to the experiment and figure out, you know, their own their own outcome. But I think it's it's just a really fascinating example of one of those tiny things.

So you can be drinking exactly the same thing across the country. You know, you might. But the way that we think about it, talk about it, whether you put the tea, you know, the milk in first, whether you call it builder's tea, will say something about yourself or will say something about what you want people to think about you. We all know it does say something about ourselves, doesn't it? I mean, I think there's a great part in the book where you talk about how the British could analyse somebody else's shopping basket or trolley and simply know just about everything about them. We read, I think we read each other's shopping trolleys in the supermarkets as though they were a character sketch. You know, we go, oh, that person's buying kind of, you know, Monster Munch and I don't know, you know, deep pan pizza. But I've got Earl Grey tea and spinach in my shopping basket. But you also say that younger people are not as judgmental and they're rather more free flowing in the way they approach their choices.

It's so interesting. When I was writing this book, quite a lot of young people said to me, oh, class, that's kind of, that's something that your generation, you know, or their parents generation was bothered about um and they felt that they'd sort of somehow escaped it and i think that's probably not true um it if you're growing up in the 50s or the 60s you had this very sort of hierarchical view of what you were, you know, what was common, what was respectable. And I think what younger people do nowadays, they're much more confident.

I think class or kind of social, you know, your kind of social background, if you're confident in your taste, then you'll choose white sliced bread and, I don't know, you know, builders tea or something. But you still have the choice of eating good, fresh, locally grown food or whatever it is, you know, builders tea or something. But you still have the choice of eating good, fresh, locally grown food or whatever it is, you know. But you do make the point, and it's a powerful one, that if you have a hard life, in whatever way that might be, you're economically challenged, you've got two part time jobs, you're a carer, you're in low paid work that frankly is arduous and perhaps boring. You may well want to treat yourself by having easily obtained, quickly cooked and available, sweet, hot, spicy food. What's wrong with that? that there has been somebody like Hogarth, for example, you know, Gin Lane showing how appalling it was that, you know, the, you know, the lower orders or whatever he called them at the time were drinking gin. There has been somebody else saying, we've got to understand why you,

there've been a Dickens saying, you know, once you've cleared up, you know, destitution and distress and disease, then consider why people drink gin, for example. And Orwell puts it brilliantly. He says, you know, if you're exhausted or miserable or low, you want to run out and get some chips, some ice cream, some sweet tea, something to get an instant lift. And I think it's very difficult for people who don't understand why people eat badly.

Because eating badly is not in your long term interest. But it might be. It might feel like it's in your short term interest. We need to bear in mind those people who don't have time to consider their long term interest. It's almost an indulgence, isn't it? You could argue. Sarah says, when I was at art school in the early 70s a fellow student invited me home to tea and i was amazed that it consisted of a proper

meal at my home tea was a cuppa and some cake or biscuits the evening meal was called supper on reflection i guess the situation was reversed when friends came to me for tea and went home hungry um okay, supper. Why is that used differently in different parts of the country and by different sorts of people? Well, every, like Sarah was saying, every word we have for a meal, breakfast I think we're all OK with. We all more or less subscribe to the kind of idea that breakfast is OK.

And then as soon as you get to elevenses or lunch or dinner or whatever it is in the middle of the day then when you have your art your sort of cup of tea at four o'clock is that tea or is that afternoon that's a cup of tea isn't it yeah but if you have it with scones and a sandwich is it then just tea which it is if you're kind of fairly aristocratic, because that's the only tea you have. But if it's a special treat for you, and you have your dinner, you know, in the middle of the day and your tea in the evening, you'll call that afternoon tea. So every single word that we use for our meals, and even the word meal itself, you know, is seen as something that's a kind of slight cop out. It's a word that you use if you don't know

whether it's dinner, tea, supper or whatever. So yeah, the language we use around our meals is really significant. Elizabeth says, I'm regularly reminded by my five-year-old American grandson on our video calls to and from California that the midday meal is lunch and not dinner as his Northern bred English grandmother refers to it.

I'm put in my place, she says, but I'm sure she doesn't mind that. Anthony, who describes himself as being from the north, says, I was on a team's work call last week and I let on that I shopped at, you know the one, the posh online supermarket. Within a second, I was berated for not shopping at one of the German discount stores. What's wrong with the food from there? I was asked. This is all, Penn, this is so loaded, isn't it? We've had a thousand years of it being loaded. Class is incredibly sticky. You know, we can't just, I think as my friends, you know, kind of grown kids are discovering, you can't just kind of decide

to extricate yourself from it. You know, we've had thousands of years of viewing meat in a particular way. Or we've had thousands, you know, or hundreds of years of telling people that they should be eating white bread or brown bread, depending on their status. Well, let's talk about bread. Lots of people deep down prefer white bread. Sour dough has sort of given people it's liberated us well hasn't i don't know isn't it funny because for again it's a hundreds of years thing you know if you if you read somebody in the in the 17th century they will be saying no white bread is something that's appropriate for the kind of you for the aristocracy or the upper classes.

You, if you're working in the fields, if you have a difficult, hard-working, labouring job, you require brown bread, partly because you need the sort of solidity of it, but you have a sort of peasant digestion that can kind of cope with it. Peasant digestion. And bread was extraordinary. It became the kind of flag of working people in this country.

They just wanted white bread. And there's a wonderful economist and vicar, I suppose, in the late 18th century. And he said, you know, people who grow the wheat, thresh the wheat, grind it. Why can't they have white bread? Why shouldn't they have it? And it's so interesting because then you get lots of people who say, no, that's not good for you. You shouldn't be having white bread. You should be having brown bread. And it becomes a sort of health stroke class battle, which sourdough has sort of given us a kind of, you know,

an opt out from in a funny kind of way. In that case, I'm afraid we've done sourdough. We must move inexorably on to the inevitable avocado part of the conversation. Now, when I was growing up, you know, it's the colour of your bathroom suite, so-called. And that's if you were posh. Well, I'm very lucky. These days, avocados are everywhere. I live in a household where the avocado is omnipresent.

I never thought I'd live in a household where people would say things like, we've run out of avocados, but now people do. Are they all right, avocados? We're going on to talk about climate change in a minute. And my understanding is actually that they're not particularly good. They need lots of water apart from anything else. Well, I think if you're talking about climate change, somebody else can give you far more detail about that. I think it's interesting because what avocado is doing in terms of its kind of career trajectory is following the potato and the tomato in the sense that it comes in, it's adopted by a kind of elite of one kind or another. And it then sort of gets,

becomes popular, and then sort of, filters down through the population. And then when it gets to, everybody starts to eat it, then people who are, you know, educated or whatever, start quite often find reasons why we shouldn't be eating these things. So for Cobbett, telling peasants in the early 19th century that you shouldn't be eating potatoes, for example. He said, they're just not, you know, they're not from this parish. Don't, you know, bread is what you should be eating. And avocados, and they might be good reasons and environmentally really sound reasons

why we shouldn't be eating avocados. But it is quite interesting that it has followed those kind of, you know, that kind of path of you know it's on a journey pen it's on the yeah i mean every food changes and they all change for very different reasons you can't it's very difficult to make overall pronouncements well we do have an expert with us the um environment correspondent at the guardian fiona harvey is prepping to take part in our next conversation. But brief word on that. Avocados, are they environmentally sound or unsound? Well, they don't have to be as unsound as they often are.

They have become quite a common item now. In fact, in Mexico, avocado used to be known as poor man's butter because it was... Of course, you can spread it effectively. You could, and it was cheap, and butter was expensive. Now, of course, avocado is grown not just in Mexico but in lots of places in America, and it's grown often in monocultures, and that's very bad for the environment.

What does that mean, a monoculture? Forgive me, I don't know. Well, imagine a sort of a field stretching as far as the eye can see to the horizon in all directions and it's just one crop. That's very bad for biodiversity because if you are, for instance, a pollinating insect or any kind of wildlife really, then you're not getting the variety of plants and so on that you need. Oh, I see. And it exhausts the soil as well.

And as you said, it takes up an awful lot of water. Right. So all of those things are quite bad things. Intensive agriculture of lots of kinds is bad for the environment and avocados have grown too intensive. That is really interesting. Does that put you off, Penn? Or maybe you're not a fan of avocados have grown too intensive. That is really interesting. Does that put you off, Pen? Or are you maybe not a fan of avocados in the first place?

Do you know what it makes me think of? It makes me think of the Irish potato famine, which was exactly the same. A complete monoculture. They had one variety of potato called the lumper because it was very prolific. And it's extraordinary how we haven't learnt from something as kind of dramatic as that.

Thank you so much, Pen. The book is called Scoff. There's just so much in there. And I hope people have just got a flavour of what's in that book, because no pun intended. This is a good one. You'll like this from Caroline. I remember standing behind two young women in their early 20s in the supermarket queue. One asked the other why her last relationship didn't work out. She said, well, you know, he was the kind of person that likes salad cream. I might have to put that in my next book. Welcome to Britain, everybody.

So you can join in 84844, but do check with your provider and all that stuff about the cost of that if you're going to text us. And at BBC Women's Out on social media. Pen, lovely to meet you. Thanks for having me. Pen is so far away. I can see somewhere in the distance. I'm waving. This is a big room and she's in it.

Yes, quite. That's Pen Vergler, author of Scoff. Now, Call You and Yours is live with Winifred Robinson around about a quarter past 12 today. And the topic for this Tuesday is, are you ready for Brexit? You can get involved. Call Winifred a little bit later. Line's open, I think just after this programme at 11. And she's with you just after 12.

It's 03 700 100 444. That's the number. So let's talk then about climate change because we have three brilliant people now. You've already met Fiona, the Environment Correspondent for The Guardian. Joining us as well, Rebecca Willis, Professor in Practice at Lancaster University and an expert lead for the Climate Assembly.

And Professor Joanna Haig, physicist and climate researcher, formerly of the Grantham Institute of Climate Change, which is part of Imperial College London. I should say, Pen, if you want to stay, you can stay. You don't need to bolt for the exit. I think Penn's going to stay with us so she can enjoy the rest of this programme. Now, let's just talk about what the Climate Assembly is to start off. And I should say that all three of these women are on the Women's Hour Power List 2020, which is, of course, about our planet. So let's talk briefly about the Climate Assembly. Rebecca, just tell us exactly what it is. Yeah, so it was this amazing experiment commissioned by the UK Parliament.

And it brought together over 100 people from all walks of life who were selected to be representative of the UK as a whole. And we met, this was just before COVID, we met in a hotel in Birmingham. And when I walked into that room, I saw my own country represented before me. And so those 108 people got to listen to experts, including Joanna, about climate science. They listened to what we can do to tackle the climate crisis. And then really crucially, they gave their own expertise and views and made their own recommendations back to Parliament. I see. Well, that sounds brilliant and really positive. You mentioned Joanna. Let's talk to Professor Joanna Haig, physicist and climate researcher. Joanna, I've worked at the BBC long

enough to have been here doing news programmes at a time when conversations about climate change had to be, quotes, balanced. When did that change? I suppose it's changed most over the last 10 years. I mean, we've known about climate and how it's changing for probably over 100 years. But people have continued to question it. And of course, it's right to question science, we need people to put out contrarian ideas. But the whole idea of balancing something that's completely wrong, so, you know, the Flat Earth Society against some decent science, really ran out of steam just a few years ago. Yeah, well, when?

When did the tide finally turn? Well, I think it's been sort of gradual, as I say, over the last 10 years or so. It's less and less people actually saying that they don't believe it or it's not due to humans there's still some actually um I still get the odd email from what we call a denier but not not nearly so many yes we need to move on now to talking about what we can do about it rather than whether it's happening or not all right well let's not waste time then on talking about that we should focus exactly as you say on what we should

do about it so um we I mean, just really interesting hearing from Fiona about the avocado. I don't want to obsess about it, but everyone's eating the flaming things now. But as she pointed out, it's not that simple, is it? Well, I'm not an expert on crops and agriculture, but what we do do in the climate science community now

is we're able to simulate much better with our models and observe with better observations how the climate is affecting, for example, land surface and agriculture and weather across the world. So we'll know whether or not avocados have got better chance of growing in certain areas than others. What should we all do, let's move away from avocados, to really lessen our great-grandchildren's chances of living in a version of hell? So there's lots of things that individuals can do. For a start, you can just use less energy. If you can insulate your home and try and save energy, you can buy your energy from renewable resources. So electricity companies that provide wind and solar energy. You can

eat less red meat because that's production of red meat is very carbon intensive, so it's going to produce greenhouse gases. You can talk to your friends. And I think this is probably the most important thing we can all do is talk to people about climate change, in particular, talk to the politicians. Finally, of course, you can stop using fossil fuel vehicles like cars with internal combustion engines and move over to electric vehicles or public transport. I mentioned this hellish vision, and there are people who talk freely about our planet burning, millions dying, climate refugees everywhere you look. Honestly, if we don't act now, Joanna, could that happen? Not to us, but to people related to those of us who are around now? Well, I think those sort of things are going to happen in the very distant future,

decades to come if we don't do something now. But individual things are already happening. So if you look at the forest fires taking place, even in Siberia and places you wouldn't have expected, they're already happening. And you're looking at sea level rise where places are becoming inundated with water on the coasts. So these things are happening gradually. But if we don't do something about it now, it'll all get much, much worse. Rebecca, you mentioned the Climate Assembly and talked about the energy and the positivity of it. Do any solutions come out of it? Any new ideas? Yeah, I mean, the amazing thing about a process like the Climate Assembly is that

it really shows that if you give people access to good information and the time and space to reflect and actually the respect and assurance that their views are important, they give you really sensible answers. So the number one recommendation, the number one principle that the Climate Assembly put forward is that we should talk about climate change more, have a much more open conversation. Having been part of the assembly, the participants couldn't believe that this conversation about climate wasn't happening everywhere. It had really opened their eyes to the issue. And, you know, they really wanted government to show leadership and they wanted us all to be involved in a collective conversation about dealing with the climate crisis and then they also put forward a whole suite of uh detailed recommendations on

what should be done in our homes to tackle um carbon emissions from travel um you know the whole gamut of policy solutions it's all there yeah it is all there. It has to be said, Fiona, that most people, although they may very well support the cause, they don't go out and vote for the Green Party, for example. They don't give up their cars. They don't entirely give up red meat, do they? Not yet. Well, there's only so much that individuals can do. And we saw that very clearly during the lockdowns earlier this year, because what happened was that emissions fell. Greenhouse gas emissions fell quite dramatically because people were not using their cars. The streets were deserted. The skies were clear of airplanes.

We were using energy in different ways and so on. But greenhouse gas emissions only fell globally by about 17 percent in April. In the UK, they fell by about a quarter. And that shows that even in the UK, three quarters of our emissions were still intact, despite the fact that we had essentially completely shut down the economy. What that shows is that we need structural change. We need changes to the way that we generate our energy, changes to our industry, changes to our houses. OK, forgive me. I thought it had changed. On Twitter, there's a wonderful, you can follow the National Grid on Twitter, which sounds the most nerdy thing I've ever said.

But it's actually fascinating because it tells you how we are generating power on any given day. And I was looking the other day and wind was providing an enormous amount of power. So things have changed for the better, haven't they? They have changed and they are changing, but we need to change a lot more because we need to get to net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. And that's what scientists are telling us. If we want to avoid the worst ravages of extreme weather, that's where we need to go. And that's a big demand. Right. OK. Is the media to blame? I mean, The Guardian, to be fair, I don't think you can get at The Guardian for not having taken this seriously. Some national newspapers have only just hopped on board with this.

But it is seen or was seen as a somewhat lefty liberal thing that certain people obsessed about and nobody else really cared. Yeah, it wasn't seen as hard news. Or mainstream, particularly. Yeah, it wasn't seen as hard news. Or mainstream, particularly. No, it wasn't seen as mainstream. And even over the weekend, the UK was hosting a climate action summit and the Prime Minister was referring to eco-freaks eating mung beans, which I don't think was very helpful. When did the Prime Minister use that term?

In front of world leaders when he was hosting a United Nations summit over the weekend. This weekend? Yes. Okay, carry on. So, yeah, it's really not about ecofreaks, as the Assembly has shown. This is about everyone. And it's really important that we do take everyone together. It must not be a political issue and seen as a kind of left or right issue,

because otherwise you just alienate half of the population. Yeah. Sorry, forgive me. I heard some slightly hollow laughter there. I couldn't work out whether it was coming from Joe or Rebecca or perhaps both. I don't know. Both of us, I expect. Yeah, I think so. Joanna, what do you want to say about that? Well, it's not it's not a left or right wing thing. And we've known about the science since the 1820s. And it's not an invention of left wing people at all.

It's just people understanding the science and seeing what's going to happen. And as Fiona rightly says, now we know more about it. We really know how to act on it as well. So the governments need to take action to reduce carbon emissions across the piece. Let's put to one side what the Prime Minister said at the weekend. The government has put money behind its initiatives, hasn't it? We keep getting this figure of £4 billion quoted. Then, of course, I know you're going to say, well, what about HS2? So, Rebecca, quick word on that. Well, I think we are seeing the government putting money into this agenda. But what I would really like them to think about

is actually not just putting money into green stuff, but also looking at everything else that they're spending money on, everything else that they're doing, and asking, is that compatible with the climate crisis? So, for example, we're still digging up oil and gas from the North Sea. There are still huge tax breaks for oil and gas extraction. There's public money funding fossil fuels. Just up the road from me in Cumbria, local politicians have given planning permission for a new coal mine that would result in nine million tonnes of carbon emissions a year. So I think now the focus has to go to how we get to the root of the problem, how we stop digging up and burning the fossil fuels that are fuelling the dangerous climate change. Thank you so much, Professor Rebecca Willis. You also heard from Professor

Joanna Haig and Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent at The Guardian. Fiona, thank you very much for coming on. I guess really briefly, it's important that these conversations are open and inclusive and comprehensible to everybody. Otherwise, there's no point, is there? Well, exactly. And in fact, we need to stop talking about climate change and global warming because they sound quite gentle and quite nice. It's more dangerous than that. It's a crisis.

I thought that was really, really interesting. Some fantastic speakers on the programme today, and they certainly included Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent for The Guardian, Rebecca Willis, Professor in Practice at Lancaster University, Expert Lead for the Climate Assembly. And Professor Joanna Haig, Physicist and Climate Researcher, formerly somebody who worked at the Grantham Institute of Climate Change, which is part of Imperial College London. Alexandra says, I find it very frustrating to listen to your guests

saying there's a limit to what individuals can do. And also find it very frustrating to listen to your guests saying there's a limit to what individuals can do. And also that it's important to talk about climate change. If one does talk about it, e.g. in the workplace, my experience is that I'm accused of being a miserabilist. And if I say I'm a vegetarian and I vote for the Green Party, then I'm a virtue signaller. I think the huge numbers of people who turn a blind eye, especially those who can afford to pay a little more for climate-friendly or ethical products, need to be

challenged far more and not let off the hook. Anna? I was just going to say, do you need anything printing? I'm reading it off here. We're trying to protect the climate, so we're not printing, are we? Keep this bit in. That's hysterical.

Bye, everyone. Yeah, bye. So that was brilliant, wasn't it? So during the course of that, I'm trying to do the podcast. I'm a professional. Well, OK, I'm a broadcaster. And the producer comes in and asks me if I want anything printed out. We're just talking about saving the planet.

Anyway, Penny says, I too saw the Prime Minister say this. Oh, that was the comment about mung beans, wasn't it? But please don't take it out of context. He was making that exact point that the climate crisis is everyone's responsibility and not the preserve of eco freaks and mung bean eaters. Okay, I'm glad we got that straightened out. I didn't, to be fair, I wasn't entirely certain about the context of what he'd said there. So thank you for pointing that out. People often mention mung beans, don't they? I've done it myself, but I've never actually seen a mung bean or to my knowledge, ever eaten one. Anyway, from Martin, thank you for that

climate change discussion today. Unfortunately, in the past, the BBC has given climate deniers like the Nigels a voice for too long in the name of so-called balance. Sensible discussions, as on your programme today, are all too rare. Here's a backhanded compliment from John, who says, I may be getting boring, but this was another interesting and relevant programme this morning. Thanks, John. From Audley, great to hear your contributors just now. Yes, climate change action needs structural change and talking with friends about what we can do practically and opening up and normalising conversations about the nature of the problem and how to tackle it. Yes, I'm a big believer in normalising, but the nature of the problem and how to tackle it. Yes, I'm a big believer in normalising, but also just using language that everyone can understand. It's very dodgy, isn't it, when you start leaving people out because they just don't get what it is you're talking about.

And I'm not always certain myself. And to food and class, Tony says, I'm really irritated by that conversation. Western society spends so much time trying to tell everyone what to eat and when to eat it and what to call it. I'm black, born in the Caribbean. I've lived in the UK for 50 years. I have what would be classed as a middle class lifestyle with all the trappings. Most hot countries will eat the main meal of the day during the middle of the day. I can't remember if it was called a particular name. It was just a meal. All these superfoods are just our natural fruit and vegetables. My cupboard staples always include various canned fish, corned beef, pulses, and they're used for everyday meals. Let people make their own choices and leave class out of it. Right, let's go to the subject of Christmas, which I asked you to contact us about because it's a difficult one this year, isn't it?

And lots of you, I know, are having to make difficult decisions. Lynn says, I'll be by myself. It's for the first time ever. I've been separated from my husband for almost a year because of COVID, not by choice. He's in China. I can't go there. He can't leave or he can't return to his job. It's just so sad. Lynn, I'm sorry. And I hope that you get through what I know is going to be a very challenging Christmas for so many people. Pam says our son's 39 and he lives alone. We are 67 and 73. We have all been really cautious about keeping safe ever since March. What we've agreed is that he will come and stay for Christmas.

This feels important as being on his own has been getting him down, even though he works with others online from home and he goes for walks with us and with friends as well. So we all agreed to be extra, extra cautious for a couple of weeks and then for him to come here and stay here until he wants to go back to his place. Well, good luck to you too. Jane says, I'd like to see programmes like Woman's Hour and You and Yours emphasising that it's OK to refuse invitations for Christmas

and also that it's OK to keep your door shut against well-meaning visitors, especially family members. I'm sure many elderly will feel pressurised to go to see family or be taken away for a Christmas visit, even though it's against their own better judgement. Now, that, I think, is an interesting point. Thank you for raising that, Jane, and I do hope that elderly people aren't put in that position. I've got to say from a personal point of view I had a conversation with my mum and dad and my sister a couple of weeks ago and my mum and dad have always come to one of us for Christmas and they're not doing it this year and you know they're 86 and 87 but I think that's the right thing.

And I've now sort of, well, my sister and I have made the decision for them that they're not coming. And it's going to be a difficult and unusual Christmas for me, and I guess it will be for lots of you too. But we really are all in this together and hopefully making the right decisions for our individual families. Jean says, we decided with our four grown-up children that it wasn't worth travelling and risking contracting and possibly spreading coronavirus. One bit of the family is in Belfast, one in Sicily, one here in London, but we see lots of them on winter walks. We've also got family in Devon, but we're going to be alone apart from inviting the two sisters who arrived in London in January as a result of the West End Welcomes Refugees work. They came here with no functional English and no family so the lockdown has made their first year in the UK very lonely and isolated. But these two sisters have

accepted our invitation to join us for their first ever Christmas dinner. But it's going to be a nut roast rather than turkey, so actually not that traditional. It'll be a very different day for us all. Well, happy Christmas to you, Jean, and well done to you for opening your doors to people who otherwise would really be having an isolated Christmas, as you say. I hope you all enjoy it. And Linda says,

my mother and I will be spending Christmas separately in our own flats. We'll have our Christmas meal together over the internet using FaceTime. Linda, happy Christmas to you and to your mum. Enjoy your lunch. And thank goodness for the technology that allows you to do that on Christmas Day. I hope it works out for you. Right, well, that's the subject I think we'll return to. We've got some really good programmes coming. I'm not just saying this, but we really have got some good programmes over

the Christmas period and the week between Christmas and New Year. There's one programme I made yesterday about women in space, which actually includes the top woman at NASA who's on that programme. It's going out December the 28th. But we're here keeping you company across the week up to Christmas, Christmas Eve, we've got a programme, we've got a programme on Christmas Day as well, which has got some lovely companionable content for you. So we're here, we're not going anywhere. And we very much hope you continue to listen. We're here tomorrow as well. That's the special, I hate to say special, but it is Strictly Come Dancing programme, in which I learn to dance in the arms of Curtis Pritchard. That's tomorrow.

Hello, Louis Theroux here. And I just wanted to hijack this podcast to tell you that I'm back with another series of my podcast, Grounded with Louis Theroux. In case you hadn't noticed, COVID hasn't gone away, and because of travel restrictions, neither have I. So I've rounded up the likes of Michaela Cole, Frankie Boyle, Oliver Stone, Sia and FKA Twigs for another set of eclectic and thought-provoking conversations. Yes, I'm still grounded, with me, Louis Theroux, Available on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever

covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.